Back in the Pokemon Saddle?

We stopped by our local game store, where we used to regularly go to play Pokemon. The same crew was there, the gym leader was there, and they were having fun.

We didn't have our cards, so we didn't play. But the kids and hubby seemed enthusiastic to come back next week and participate.

There's a pretty big group now. It's tempting. Should we start playing Pokemon again?

Great Encounters for Pokemon

There is yet another Pokemon Diamond and Pearl TCG set available. It's called Great Encounters. The 7 year old is all abuzz with excitement that she can get new pokemon. Hubby is trying to find room in the Pokemon binder to fit new cards. I am wondering how anyone can keep up with it all.

Tonight, we offered to play the game with the 7 year old, and she wasn't all that interested in the "real" game. She had her own version. I don't know if we'll be back to the game store PokeGym any time soon.

Maybe our kids are too young to care about competition. Maybe there are so many cards now, that the kids are overwhelmed. I know I am! Even so, they kids still love their Pokemon cards. And they have them mostly memorized.

It's amazing what a 7 year old's brain can remember.

We Missed a Pokegym Tournament!

We went to our local pokegym yesterday, and found out that there was a tournament on Saturday, and we didn't know it. Only three people were there! We could have totally won the tournament!

Don't miss a tournament like we did! Search for your local tournament here.

Starter Deck Ownage

We're totally new to Pokémon but we're not new to Trading Card Games. We both have played Magic: The Gathering and Jyhad. Note however, that this was about 10 years ago and the last time we bought cards was when the Ice Age expansion was release for MTG.

So, going into Pokémon, we knew that there was some work to be done with deck optimization and card selection. We started out with the three starter decks for the Diamond and Pearl set and soon accumulated about 6 booster packs worth of cards. With these extra cards, we balanced out the decks so that the fire deck wouldn't get totally annihilated by the water deck and the leaf deck wouldn't get burned to a crisp by the fire deck.

Enter Father's Day. Early in the morning we all went over to our Game Empire in Pasadena to have the kids play in their tournament. Fun was had, but the kids could only get through about three games before we had to jet for my brother's house for Father's Day festivities.

My nephew has been playing Pokémon for about 8 years and has played in many tournaments and has had literally years to optimize his deck and his tactics. We had our cards with us because we just came over from the game store. It seemed natural to get a couple of games going. Well, the first game that I played ended in total disaster for me. He played a fire deck with a bunch of cards that you can't play in current Tournament play and it was very apparent after a couple of rounds that I was completely outclassed. Tammy played a second game with him where he played a Tournament legal deck with one of our augmented starer decks and was also defeated handily.

This experience has certainly shown us that we can't just go out and play with decks that are generically crafted by Nintendo. That said, what are we to do with our almost factory decks. More boosters from the 2007 Tournament legal sets are certainly in our future. However, I don't think we'll go out and buy specific cards from EBay. I really like the mystery of buying a booster and possibly getting something unexpected that will help out all of our decks that we play in the family as well as at the game store. Also, I would like all the decks we create in the house to be balanced so that everyone has the possibility of winning no matter what deck is chosen. (I know that it will be very challenging to achieve this particular goal.)

Just as a baseline, I'd like to list all the cards that are contained in the default Fire deck. It will be interesting what we do with this deck as it matures over time.

1 x Infernape
2 x Monferno
4 x Chimchar
1 x Medicham
4 x Meditite
2 x Rapidash
4 x Ponyta
2 x Starly
1 x Hippowdon
4 x Hippopotas
1 x Professor Rowan
2 x PlusPower
2 x Poké Ball
2 x Pokédex HANDY910is
2 x Energy Search
2 x Potion
16 x Fire Energy
8 x Fighting Energy